Red River campaign

The Red River campaign, also known as the Red River expedition, was a major Union offensive campaign in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War, the campaign taking place from March 10 to May 22, 1864. It was launched through the densely forested Gulf Coastal Plain region between the Red River Valley and central Arkansas towards the end of the war. The offensive was intended to stop Confederate use of the Louisiana port of Shreveport, open an outlet for the sugar and cotton of northern Louisiana, and to split the Confederate lines, allowing the Union to encircle and destroy the Confederate military forces in Louisiana and southern Arkansas. It marked the last major offensive attempted by the Union in the Trans-Mississippi theater.

The expedition was a Union military operation, fought between roughly 30,000 federal troops under the command of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks and Confederate forces under General E. Kirby Smith, whose strength varied from 6,000 to 15,000. The Battle of Mansfield was a major part of the Union offensive campaign, which ended in defeat for General Banks.

The expedition was primarily the plan of Major General Henry W. Halleck, former General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States. A diversion from Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's plan to surround the main Confederate armies by using Banks' Army of the Gulf to capture Mobile, it was characterized by poor planning and mismanagement, and led to bitter enmity between Major General Richard Taylor and his immediate superior, Kirby Smith, after Smith ordered Taylor to send half of his army to north to Arkansas, rather than south in pursuit of Banks, following the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill.

The Union had four goals at the start of the campaign:

Union strategists in Washington thought that the occupation of East Texas and control of the Red River would separate Texas from the rest of the Confederacy. Texas was the source of much needed guns, food, and supplies for Confederate troops.

Other historians have claimed that the campaign was also motivated by concern regarding the 25,000 French troops in Mexico sent by Napoleon III and under the command of Emperor Maximilian. At the time, the Confederates offered to recognize the government of Maximillian in return for French recognition of the Confederacy; the Confederates also hoped to gain access to valuable war goods through this recognition. However, Banks' campaign on the Texas coast during November and December 1863 had satisfied U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who wrote to Banks, "My thanks for your successful and valuable operations in Texas."

Halleck's plan, finalized in January 1864, called for Banks to take 20,000 troops upriver from New Orleans to Alexandria, including the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, the only regiment from the Keystone State to fight in this campaign, on a route up the Bayou Teche (in Louisiana, the term bayou is used to refer to a slow-moving river or stream), where they would be met by 15,000 troops sent down from Major General William T. Sherman's forces in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and under the command of Brigadier General Andrew J. Smith. Smith's forces were available to Banks only until the end of April, when they would be sent back east, where they were needed for other Union military actions.

Banks would command this combined force of 35,000, which would be supported in its march up the Red River towards Shreveport by Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's fleet of gunboats. At the same time, 7,000 Union troops from the Department of Arkansas under the command of Major General Frederick Steele would be sent south from Arkansas to rendezvous with Banks in his attack on Shreveport, and to serve as the garrison for that city after its capture.